A priest who has warned against reopening churches for Easter has today threatened to defy Pope Francis and bless same sex couples.
Father Timothy Hazelwood is a leader in the ultra liberal Association of Catholics Priests, a group who repeatedly attempt to drag the church back to the 1970s with its tacky addiction to inane and shallow theology and liturgy.
Speaking to the ACP’s beloved State Broadcaster RTE today, Father Hazelwood stated that he would bless couples in same sex relationships, stating, ‘If Christ was with us now, he would do the caring, the loving thing’. The experience of John the Baptist would suggest that God does not regard the support for such unions (since the recent Vatican announcement was not solely focuses on same sex relationships) as ‘loving’.
In a bizarre comment, Father Hazelwood stated that ‘‘there is a small group who are very anti-Pope Francis and anti the changes, the new breath of life that he's bringing.” This statement is of course bizarre because he himself is opposing Pope Francis in this instance.
He stated: ‘Now, if two people stand in front of me and they love each other, and they’re committing to each other for the rest of their lives, and I bless shamrock and I wouldn’t bless them; no, I don't think there’s a doubt or a question there.’.
He then sent a veiled threat, stating: “For a lot of people and families, it's very disappointing. Does he want to cause a schism in the church?"
Father Hazelwood then reflected: ‘‘In Ireland, we're going to have a synod in the next five years and the bishops have said they want people on the margins to be part of that’’.
Anyone who listened to the ACP’s recent webcast on this issue will know that young people are not included on that list of people on the margins, unless, it appears, they are engaged in homosexual activity. In a dark and pessimistic event, one priest said that a Synod would merely be an effort to ‘manage the decline of the Irish church’. The outdated boomer echo chamber repeated the same tired cliches that they’ve been repeating for 50 years now.
When Bishop Gavin commented that young people would not agree with anything being said during the podcast, not a single person piped up to acknowledge it.
What is it going to be? Are young people going to let these people cause as much damage to the church as they can at the Synod and let us spend the rest of our lives cleaning up the mess? Are the bishops going to let these people do their job and determine what is allowed to be said at the Synod? Is Pope Francis really going to take orders from these people who have driven hundreds of thousands from the faith?
The answer to all of the above is no.
If the ACP wants to join their German compatriots in schism, let them. The Irish church will be much better off for finally being rid of them turning our souls and our lives into their little sociological experiment.
